An Erdogan government insider had contracts with Flynn’s group going back to the campaign, documents filed by Trump’s former national security advisor’s firm show.

What did Trump’s team know about Michael Flynn’s Turkish lobbying gig and when did they know it? White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Thursday said that President Donald Trump had no idea Flynn, his former national security adviser and campaign trail confidant, was working for a shadowy man named Kamil Ekim Alptekin with deep ties to the Turkish government.

Flynn’s firm, the Flynn Intel Group, filed lobbying disclosure forms revealing the surface of the relationship with Alptekin going as far back as September. While the forms don’t mention Turkey, and Flynn last week denied knowing of any connection between Alptekin’s firm and the Turkish government, a series of additional filings and actions should have raised red flags in Trump’s campaign, the White House, and elsewhere, especially by November, when Flynn published a controversial op-ed advocating for better U.S. relations with Turkey that aligned squarely with the interests of Alptekin and the increasingly incalcitrant Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Who is Kamil Ekim Alptekin? He’s the president of EA Holdings, a Turkish maker of defense products and information technology, as well as a the founder of Eclipse Aerospace, a small-plane manufacturer based in New Mexico. Most importantly, Alptekin is closely associated with the government of Erdogan. Flynn’s relationship with Alptekin and Turkey gained additional scrutiny last week when the retired 3-star general’s lawyers disclosed more details of his firm’s relationship in new federal government filings. In them, they allege Alptekin is not “an agent” of any government. But the form also reveals that as part of that contract, Alptekin introduced Turkish government officials to Flynn Intel Group officials at a Sept. 19 meeting in New York.

Flynn claims the work he did for Alpetkin’s company consisted of advising on a potential deal with another company in Israel to export natural gas to Turkey. Flynn’s job was helping Aptekin’s company to “understand the tumultuous political climate at the time between the United States and Turkey so that Inovo could advise its client regarding its business opportunities and investment in Turkey,” the form reads.

Rather than ask why did a group of Turkish officials need to meet Michael Flynn to talk about a gas deal, a better question might be, did Alptekin have any ambitions about influencing the U.S. government?

In a word, yes.

After the failed July coup in Turkey, in a July interview with the nominally nonpartisan Centre for Policy and Research on Turkey, published just before Flynn got on Alptekin’s payroll, Alptekin described ongoing and increasing efforts to influence U.S. policy and nullify the influence of Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish cleric who lives in self-exile in Pennsylvania. The Erdogan government has blamed Gulen for the coup.

“If we are truly determined to struggle against the parallel structure” — the term used by Erdogan loyalists to invoke a purported Gülenist shadow government — “we have to invest in similar resources equally, to ponder as much as them, regarding developing trade relations with the biggest economy of the world, and getting what we deserve in issues like Syria and Cyprus,” he said.

What did Turkey deserve? More money for Turkish arms makers, it appears, especially of the sort that participate with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.

“Donating to the Congress is the most essential aspect of lobbying activity in American politics,” he says. “For instance, if you want to buy something from Turkey…if you want to export weaponry, the approval of the Turkish government is enough. This is not the case in the U.S. In fact, if you want to buy weapons from the U.S., you also need the approval of the Congress. We recently started to understand this system and to shape our policies accordingly. Not only do the people we meet during the visits and the people we invite when we go there change, but we also started changing our strategy and tactics. And this shift is giving its fruits.”

Jump four months later to Nov. 8 — Election Day — when Flynn’s op-ed was published, in which he argues: “We need to adjust our foreign policy to recognize Turkey as a priority. We need to see the world from Turkey’s perspective,” Flynn wrote. “We must begin with understanding that Turkey is vital to U.S. interests.”

In between those dates, shortly after the September meeting in New York between Alptekin’s Turkish government friends and Flynn Intel Group, Flynn’s lawyer filed a lobbying disclosure form revealing that they would begin “consulting” work for a Dutch-based company called Inovo BV, according to the congressional research service Legistorm. But little else is known about it. Unlike the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, forms Flynn filed last week, standard lobbying disclosure forms do not require lobbyists to disclose all that much, and Flynn Intel Group’s is typically vague. It gives only a Dutch-based address for Inovo and does not describe the sort of work the company does.

When Legistorm analyzed the lobbying forms in October, it said, “Flynn’s firm will be doing organization consulting’ on behalf of Inovo BV. Why ‘organization consulting’ would require a federal lobbying disclosure is not made clear.” Robert Kelley, the firm’s lawyer and a former chief counsel to the House Oversight Committee’s national security subcommittee, signed the forms.

In November, the Daily Caller obtained Dutch registration records for Inovo that showed the company is owned by Kamil Ekim Alptekin.

Flynn’s group in November also filed a second, sparse, lobbying disclosure form about their work with Inovo B.V., which would have given the Trump team additional public record documents to vet.

In his November op-ed in The Hill, Flynn called Gülen a dangerous extremist who has played the U.S. government for fools, an opinion Flynn shares with Erdogan and, perhaps more to the point, with Alptekin.

The op-ed was updated last week with an editor’s note on Flynn’s financial arrangement with Inovo, reading: “On March 8, 2017, four months after this article was published, General Flynn filed documents with the Federal government indicating that he earned $530,000 last fall for consulting work that might have aided the government of Turkey. In the filings, Flynn disclosed that he had received payments from Inovo BV, a Dutch company owned by a Turkish businessman with ties to Turkey’s president and that Inovo reviewed the draft before it was submitted to The Hill. Neither General Flynn nor his representatives disclosed this information when the essay was submitted.”

In a cover letter affixed to Flynn’s FARA registration, he states: “Because of the subject matter of Flynn Intel Group’s work for Inovo BV, which focused on Mr. Fethullah Gulen, whose extradition is sought by the Government of Turkey, the engagement could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.”

So what did Trump and Spicer know, and when did they know it?

On Friday, Spicer walked back his Thursday statement, acknowledging a discussion between Trump transition team lawyers and Flynn’s attorneys had occurred. Flynn was advised to seek private counsel on whether to file the FARA disclosure.

“They consulted a lawyer, which everyone who had something is advised to do.That lawyer consulted the transition lawyer who said it is your job to consult the appropriate lawyers,” Spicer said.

“In this case he retroactively filed the forms that he was supposed to do. But we advised him to do what the legal and proper thing was and that’s the right thing for this administration.”

Defense One confirmed on Tuesday that Flynn’s lawyers before and after the inauguration told White House counsel that Flynn was probably going to have to file a FARA disclosure form related to his work for the Flynn Intel Group.

Spicer made it clear White House officials believe it was Flynn’s obligation to file appropriate documents. “It is not up to nor is it appropriate nor is it legal for the government to start going into private citizens, seeking advice and telling them what they have to register or not,” he said, Friday.

“There was no disclosure at the time. And the question is, is that if his counsel worked with whomever he worked with and determined that he didn’t, that was up to him. But it was up to him. The burden is on the individual to seek the legal advice or professional expertise to decide what they have to file and not.”

All of that implies Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, knew what he was supposed to disclose. But he admits he still does not know if he was working for Alptekin or Turkey. “Flynn Intel Group does not know whether or the extent to which the Republic of Turkey was involved with its retention by Inovo for the three month project.”http://www.defenseone.com/politics/2017 ... ed/136154/

Mike Flynn Worked for Several Russian Companies, Was Paid More Than $50,000, Documents Show

March 16, 2017 By Shane Harris, Paul Sonne and Carol E. Lee

Former Trump national security adviser had business connections with Russia beyond RT that hadn’t been previously known

President Trump’s former national security adviser, Mike Flynn, was paid tens of thousands of dollars by Russian companies shortly before he became a formal adviser to the then-candidate, according to documents obtained by a congressional oversight committee that revealed business interests that hadn’t been previously known.

Mr. Flynn was paid $11,250 each by a Russian air cargo company that had been suspended as a vendor to the United Nations following a corruption scandal, and by a Russian cybersecurity company that was then trying to expand its business with the U.S. government.

Those engagements took place in the summer and fall of 2015, a year after he had been fired as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and while he continued to maintain a top-secret level security clearance.

In December 2015, the Kremlin-backed news organization RT also paid Mr. Flynn $33,750 to speak about U.S. foreign policy and intelligence matters at a conference in Moscow.

In February 2016, Mr. Flynn became an official adviser to the presidential campaign of Mr. Trump, who was taking a softer stance toward Moscow than his Republican rivals at the time.

Price Floyd, a spokesman for Mr. Flynn, said he reported his RT appearance to the Defense Intelligence Agency, as required. Mr. Floyd didn’t immediately respond to questions about the other fees.

The new details about Mr. Flynn’s speaking engagements are contained in emails and documents provided to congress by his speaker’s bureau, which is called Leading Authorities, and shed light on a continuing inquiry into Mr. Flynn’s and other Trump associates’ ties to Moscow.

On Monday, FBI Director James Comey and other current and former U.S. officials are scheduled to testify about possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election before a congressional committee that is also probing Trump associates’ ties to Russia.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from any investigation related to the 2016 presidential campaign after he failed to disclose the extent of his own contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergei Kislyak.

Mr. Trump fired Mr. Flynn in February after he failed to tell White House officials about phone calls he had with Mr. Kislyak, in which the two discussed the potential lifting of U.S. sanctions on Russia, according to U.S. officials familiar with the contents of the conversations.

While the documents from Mr. Flynn’s speaker’s bureau provide the most detail to date on his business dealings with Russia, they don’t show what other work he may have been doing outside his role as a paid speaker. Mr. Flynn commanded high fees for speaking out on the state of global security and talking about his own role as one of the most senior intelligence officials in the Obama administration.

Mr. Flynn was removed from his post as DIA chief after complaints of poor management and organization, not because of a policy dispute, according to people who worked with him at the time.

Last week, Mr. Flynn filed papers with the Justice Department acknowledging that his firm was paid $530,000 to work in the U.S. on behalf of the interests of the Turkish government. Mr. Flynn had performed those services while he was advising Mr. Trump, then a presidential candidate.

Little additional information has become public about other clients the former military intelligence chief’s private consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, may have had before the retired general’s appointment as national security adviser.

Lesser media attention was paid, however, to something potentially much more sinister.

UPDATED: General Flynn’s Russian Payments: The Real Question That Wasn’t AskedPosted on MARCH 17, 2017

Today US Congress Oversight Committee published a document outlining the sources and amounts of payments from Russian entities received by Gen. Michael Flynn in the period immediately preceding and in the course of the presidential campaign. Most media coverage focused on the amount paid by Kremlin’s so-called news TV channel, RussiaToday (RT), for Flynn to fly to Moscow in December 2015 and sit next to President Putin at the TV stations’ anniversary gala. And that’s understandable, given the unsavory optics of Flynn’s decision to, essentially, sell his body to Kremlin’s propaganda arm for 2 evenings and charge 55 k for it.

Lesser media attention was paid, however, to something potentially much more sinister. The Committee’s findings also disclose a payment of approx 11k from Volga Dnepr, a Russian aviation transportation company which has been a long-time market leader in delivering military equipment to hard-to-reach or highly dangerous locations; primarily thanks to its fleet of Antonov 124 large and sturdy planes. Volga Dnepr has for years been a logistics partner for the peace-keeping units of United Nations, and for the armies of European countries and the Pentagon. Or at least, it had been a partner until recently. We will come to that in a minute.

The Oversight Committee takes a jab at Volga Dnepr, implying poor judgement by Flynn in taking money from a company that was linked to a UN corruptoin scandal in 2007.

However, this incident predates Flynn’s possible engagement by nearly a decade and can only imply poor judgement and a broken moral compass. But for this we already have the RT trip.

What could potentially be more meaningful is that around the time of the services for which Flynn charged $11,250, Volga-Dnepr was in serious trouble with the Pentagon, and was in dire need of help, legal and otherwise. Shockingly, the House Oversight Committee seems completely unaware of this.

Between 2002 and 2014 USTRANSCOM, Pentagon’s transportation procurement arm, had used Volga Dnepr as a subcontractor in approximately 13,000 missions transporting military cargo to U.S. and its allies. Suddenly, on February 9, 2015, USTRANSCOM abruptly terminated its relationship with Volga Dnepr and informed it – and all Pentagon subcontractors by email – that it shall not be used for further military operations abroad.

In two subsequent prohibition circulars from March 2014 (see second one below), USTRANSCOM stated that Volga Dnepr was “unsuitable” for sub-contracting by the Pentagon.

USTRANSCOM provided no further information despite Volga Dnepr’s requests for clarificaiton of the reasons for termination. An email from AtlasAir, one of the Pentagon’s direct contractors previously sub-contracting Volga-Dnepr’s, to US CEO Sergey Reznikov from February 24 2015 made it clear that Volga’s blacklisting is not a “lightly made decision” and is not simply the result of the “political environment”. AtlasAir recommends Volga-Dnepr to go via the Russian Embassy in D.C. to check what, if anything, can be done to reverse the Pentagon’s decision.

On July 27 2015, the USTRANSCOM informed Volga Dnepr that it cannot share the motivation for its blacklisting decision, citing the sensitive, classified nature of the data.

As Volga-Dnepra states in its pleading notes to a court filing at the US District Court in Columbia, in the year years following the termination notice in February 2014,

“Volga Dnepr made many efforts to learn why USTRANSCOM banned it from USTRANSCOM contracts and tenders”

but it was not able to get direct feedback from the Pentagon. Then, on May 11, 2015, Volga Dnepr filed a Freedon of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Pentagon, hoping to receive the requested information. To this end it hired Squire Patton Boggs, the US law and lobbying firm that represents other Russian companies, such as Gazprombank, in their quest to get past the US sanctions.

The Pentagon was in a pickle: under US FOIA law, it had to provide information in its reasoning and decision-making process in dismissing a procurement relationship; yet this was not an ordinary supplier, but a Russian arms speditioner that works closely with the Russian government. Any information about specific reasons for terminating the agreements would likely provide information to Moscow about what the US knew about Moscow. And it’s likely that that in itself was a key motive for the FOIA request.

On December 15, 2015, 230 days after Volga Dnepr’s First FOIA Request, USTRANSCOM released a 41-page response to Volga Dnepr, of which 37 pages were redacted in part or in full. The statement referred to multiple examples of Volga-Dnepr breaching US laws and nationa-interest doctrine, but the examples themselves were fully redacted (except one). The headings above each example, however, were telling: Subcontractor activities Counter to US Interests, Support to anti-US Regimes, Weapons proliferation, Vulnerability to Exploitation, etc.

The only unredacted example listed in the statement was the delivery of 2 SU-30MK fighters to Vietnam in December 2014 on account of Rosoboronexport, a sanctioned Russian state arms-export company, transacting with with which makes any US counterpart ineligible for business.

Volga Dnepr appealed this redacted response and took the case to court in October 2016, after failing to receive a reaction from the Pentagon.

So it appears that four months after Volga-Dnepr’s contract with the Pentagon was terminated due to “unsuitability for transacting” with the the Pentagon, and after – in the company’s own words – it began to “make many efforts to learn why USTRANSCOM banned it from USTRANSCOM contracts and tenders”, the Russian company made a payment of $ 11.250 to General Flyn.General Flynn, as we know, was Donald Trump’s short-lived National Security Advisor with ephemeral but full access to all state secrets, Pentagon or otherwise. But this was not the first time he got such access. At the time he provided the unspecified service to the Russian company, he had been fired from his DIA job for a year but still had top-security clearance. This would suggest that Flynn would have been uniquely useful to Volga-Dnepr in their search to identify what the Pentagon knew or didn’t know about the company’s disqualifying projects. What is clear is that Flynn provided a service to a Russian company formally blacklisted by the Pentagon for activities contrary to US Interests. What is also beyond doubt is that at that very time, that company was searching for data that the Pentagon refused to share, because -as it would later argue in defending its FOIA redactions – the sources for such information was highly sensitive and its disclosure would affect US’s national security.Yet, Flynn had access to such data due to his residual security clearance.Based on Flynn’s security clearance level, he would have had access to the USTRANSCOM’s unredacted assessment dated February 18th 2015, which motivated the Pentagon’s conclusion that Volga-Dnepr was acting against US interests, was promoting weapons proliferation and was assisting regimes hostile to the US. He would have had ample opportunity to recuse himself from the engagement with Volga-Dnepr after such discovery. He did not, and proceeded to receive payment from Volga-Dnepr in August 2015.I cannot be certain that Flynn was engaged and received payment for providing (or attempting to supply) confidential, classified data to a company blacklisted by the Pentagon. However the timing, as well as Flynn’s unique qualifications, at least suggest that the payment was likely to be linked to Volga-Dnepr’s struggle to obtain information that the Pentagon was refusing to share out of security concerns.Neither Flynn nor Volga-Dnepr have responded to media requests for comments on the nature of the service relationship.If my hypotethesis turns out to be true, Flynn’s Moscow shopping trip may be the least of his problems. The scariest part is that none of this is in the Congress Committee’s report.UPDATE ON 3/17/2017 at 10 pm:Volga-Dnepr have published a statement that the $11,250 paid to General Flynn was for a speech Flynn made at a Middle East & African Spedition & Security conference in Washington, D.C . that was sponsored by Volga-Dnepr’s subsidiary Volga Dnepr Unique Air Cargo. Volga Dnepr, somewhat quizzically, says there is no connection between the selection of Flynn as speaker and his future appointment as national security adviser to Donald Trump.At the time of the conference, Volga-Dnepr Unique Air was suffering significant loss of clients due to its reputatiin damage following its being blacklisted by the Pentago, as can be seen in this letter by the company

Therefore, the idea that Unique Air would pay General Flynn, the former DIA chief, to speak at an international arms conference, at its invitation and on its behalf, would not be out of the question.If this was the sole relationship between Flynn and Volga Dnepr, the only question that remains is that of the moral and political choice by Flynn to speak on behalf of a company of which he had knowledge to have been blacklisted by the Pengagon, over issues at serious odds with US law and national security interest.https://cgrozev.wordpress.com/2017/03/1 ... snt-asked/

‘Fully Complied’

“The committee is satisfied that the Department of Justice has fully complied with our request for information from our March 8 letter on possible surveillance related to Donald Trump or his associates,” Representative Devin Nunes of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement late Friday without discussing the contents of the classified file.https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/arti ... ce-sort-of

but things just keep getting worse for our dear Yellowkerk friend ....I'm thinking he was definitely under surveillance

A Russian air cargo carrier that paid former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn more than $11,000 had been blacklisted without warning by the Pentagon months before he became Donald Trump’s top campaign adviser on military matters, according to documents obtained by McClatchy.

Documents released Thursday by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform omitted an important piece of information: At the time that the U.S. affiliate of Russian cargo airline Volga-Dnepr paid Flynn $11,250 in August 2015, the Russian company had been frozen out by the Pentagon since February that year and was trying to learn why.

“Unsuitable for use,” is how a U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) email in May 2015 characterized the air cargo carrier.

One possible explanation in the heavily redacted documents obtained by McClatchy: Volga-Dnepr in December 2014 ferried two Su-30MK2 attack aircraft to Da Nang, Vietnam, on behalf of Russian arms exporter Rosoboronexport.

The Russian defense firm was one of 23 ‑ including some in China and Turkey ‑ hit by U.S. sanctions in September 2015 for alleged violations of treaties that banned the spread of missile technologies.

Documents released Thursday by Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, about Volga-Dnepr showed that an affiliate of the air cargo company had paid Flynn $11,250 in August 2015.

The revelation that Flynn was paid by a Russian air cargo firm considered off-limits by the Pentagon first emerged in a posting Friday by blogger Cristo Grozev, a Bulgarian with media interests in Western Europe and Ukraine.

Flynn’s speech to the Russian company was arranged by U.S.-based Battle Born Munitions, which had co-sponsored a Middle East & African Logistical and Security conference in Washington with the Houston-based subsidiary of Volga-Dnepr, according to a statement provided to American Shipper magazine. It said Friday that Battle Born had gone through the Leading Authorities Speakers Bureau.

“At that time General Flynn was a retired military officer, not a member of President Trump’s election team, and his nomination as national security adviser more than a year after the conference was not a factor in his being invited as a speaker,” the statement said.

Efforts to reach Flynn and associates were unsuccessful.

Four months after he was paid for the Volga-Dnepr speech, Flynn was seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a dinner in Moscow paid for by the RT news network. RT paid Flynn and his speakers’ bureau more than $45,000, according to the documents Thursday from Cummings.

Asked why Volga-Dnepr’s contract blacklisting was not included in the Cummings report a day earlier, a Democratic committee aide said Friday, “Every day we are learning new information about General Flynn’s ties to Russia, and we will continue to gather as much information as possible.”

Flynn was a decorated combat veteran who rose to the rank of lieutenant general and was appointed by President Barack Obama to head the Defense Intelligence Agency in October 2012. After repeated clashes with superiors, he took early retirement in August 2014 and soon afterward opened a consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group. He was tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as national security adviser in November 2016.

But Flynn’s tenure lasted just 24 days, brought down by reports that he had not been truthful with Vice President Mike Pence about meetings in December with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. After being fired by Trump on Feb. 13, Flynn belatedly registered with the Justice Department weeks later as a foreign agent, disclosing that he had been paid more than $530,000 for lobbying work before the inauguration. It meant he was collecting money from foreign governments even as he sat in on transition-team classified briefings.

State Department cables published by the WikiLeaks website show that Volga-Dnepr has long been both a partner and a worry for the U.S. military.

The Russian-based cargo airline flew about 13,000 missions as a subcontractor for USTRANSCOM from 2002 to 2014, according to Volga-Dnepr’s Freedom of Information Act appeal last year.

Volga-Dnepr had filed a Freedom of Information Act request in an effort to pry loose the reasons behind the sudden blacklisting of a company that had long cooperated with the U.S. Air Force’s Transportation Command.

The cargo airline had worked for the United Nations, as well. But it was suspended from a list of approved vendors in 2007 after two Russian U.N. officials were prosecuted for steering contracts to the airline in exchange for bribes, according to the House Democrats’ report.

Sergey Reznikov, a Volga-Dnepr vice president in Woodland Hills, Texas, wrote to USTRANSCOM attorneys that the company’s sudden removal as a subcontractor “has caused a ripple effect to/with our customers.”

It was one of many in 37 pages of documents obtained by McClatchy that were released to the Russian air carrier by the government. Most of the explanations for the blacklisting were heavily redacted.

Court records show that Volga-Dnepr’s attorneys, from the Washington firm of Squire Patton Boggs, reached a tentative deal with military lawyers around Feb. 10. A status update on the lawsuit was scheduled for Friday, but no court records had been posted by the close of business.

Attorney Michael Guiffre, who filed the appeal of the Pentagon’s redactions, did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Reznikov. A co-worker in the global defense division of the air carrier abruptly ended a phone conversation when asked about Flynn’s speech.

State Department records published through an infamous leak by London-based transparency advocate WikiLeaks show Volga-Dnepr was a long-standing concern to U.S. diplomats, too.

In a confidential Nov. 17, 2007, cable to headquarters, a diplomat in the U.S. embassy in Berlin reported that the German government had blocked a Russian arms shipment that stopped on its way to Venezuela.

The cable said the Germans had acted on a tip from the Portuguese embassy, which had warned that Russian rockets were being sent to Venezuela, stopping first in the German city of Leipzig. The shipment, carried by Volga-Dnepr, was on behalf of Rosoboronexport.

In another confidential cable, sent on June 15, 2009, by Richard Olson, U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, headquarters was notified that four American soldiers had been detained, along with the crew of a Volga-Dnepr flight. The U.S. military escorts were accompanying weaponry bound for Afghanistan, which had not been declared to local authorities.

Mike Flynn Didn’t Report 2014 Interaction With Russian-British NationalMeeting at a U.K. dinner occurred when he was head of the Defense Intelligence AgencyBy CAROL E. LEE, ROB BARRY, SHANE HARRIS and CHRISTOPHER S. STEWARTMarch 18, 2017 12:04 a.m. ETWASHINGTON-—Former national security adviser Mike Flynn interacted with a graduate student with dual Russian and British nationalities at a 2014 U.K. security conference, a contact that came to the notice of U.S. intelligence but that Mr. Flynn, then the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, didn’t disclose, according to people familiar with the matter.

Exposed: Michael Flynn has been secretly meeting with Russians since his time at the DIABy Bill Palmer | March 17, 2017 | 0

Donald Trump’s decision to hire Michael Flynn as a campaign adviser and later as his White House National Security Adviser continues to look more suspicious. Despite Trump’s longtime insistence that he wasn’t aware Flynn had any contact with Russia or the Kremlin during the campaign, the Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Flynn’s pattern of covertly meeting with Russians dates back to his final days at the Defense Intelligence Agency before he was fired.

Before Michael Flynn went on to become a paid foreign agent of Russia and Turkey and simultaneously an adviser to Donald Trump, he’d seemingly had a respectable military career. Flynn was the head of the DIA under President Barack Obama. But for reasons still unknown, he unraveled during his time on the job, acting in an abrasive and out of control manner, and had to be fired in 2014. That’s the point at which he went fully rogue and decided to go on the take from multiple foreign nations. But now it turns out that Flynn had at least one meeting with a Russian shortly before he was fired, which he failed to disclose as required at the time.

Flynn met with a young Russian woman named Svetlana Lokhova while at a conference in the United Kingdom in 2014. If this Russian woman came out of nowhere and approached Flynn, then he would have been expected and required to report the encounter when he got home. These are the kinds of tactics often used by foreign spies, and are therefore reported and tracked – particularly when it involves the head of the DIA. But instead there is no record that Flynn reported the meeting, thus suggesting that the meeting involved something on Flynn’s part that he didn’t want the U.S. government knowing about.

This raises several questions. Was this Russian woman (source: Wall Street Journal) sent to this UK conference to recruit Michael Flynn for the Kremlin? Was this the starting point for Flynn's subsequent coordinations with the Russians which involved everything from dining with Vladimir Putin in 2015 to routinely phoning the Russian Ambassador while working for the Trump campaign? And how much did Donald Trump know about Flynn's illicit Russian ties when he hired him in 2016?http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/exp ... -dia/1965/

but wait a minute

why was Mike Flynn surveilled?

was he surveilled?

Intel chair asked for info on Fylnn by today from the three agencies respond by today NSA partial response

CIA and FBI have NOT responded

this is NOT moral ....they are supposed to be compelled to do what the Intell Committee asks.... they can not say no

this is strange......was Flynn illegally surveilled?

our constitution does not work this way FBI CIA have to do what the Intel Committee says

satisfied.....satisfied that listening to Flynn had been happening and it was legal? :big smile

LOBBYING LOOPHOLESWhile Michael Flynn Lobbied for Turkey, His Firm Told Congress to Extradite Turkish DissidentMonths before he registered as a foreign agent, his company brought in House staffers to preview encrypted technology—then pushed them to send Turkey a wanted man living in the U.S.KIMBERLY DOZIERLACHLAN MARKAY03.17.17 10:37 AM ETThe congressional staffers thought they were going to see a whiz-bang encrypted communications technology when they traveled to Old Town, Alexandria, for a presentation by the now-shuttered Flynn Intel Group.It’s what came after that gave them pause: a half-baked, conspiracy theory-laden briefing alleging that Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen is leading an Islamic extremist cultural invasion of the United States.He’s a threat to us, and to our good friend and ally Turkey, Flynn representative Bijan Kian told the House Homeland Security Committee staffers, according to a congressional staffer familiar with the matter.Kian asked the staffers to back the Turkish government’s demand to extradite Gülen, apparently not realizing their committee didn’t have jurisdiction over the matter, the staffer said.“It was a sloppy, uncompelling presentation” that smacked of lobbying on Turkey’s behalf, according to a congressional staffer, sharing details not previously reported about the October meeting.That view was only strengthened when retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn published an op-ed arguing for Gülen’s extradition, describing him as “a shady Islamic mullah residing in Pennsylvania whom former President Clinton once called his ‘friend.’”Yet Flynn Intel Group only registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent last week—acknowledging that his firm’s work may have benefited Turkey. The public disclosure came after he’d served the shortest term as national security adviser in U.S. history, stepping down after misrepresenting his contacts with the Russian ambassador to Vice President Mike Pence.And now House Democrats on Thursday released documents detailing that Flynn was paid more than $56,000 in 2015 by three Russian firms with alleged Kremlin ties, including Russian President Vladimir Putin’s media mouthpiece RT and Kaspersky Labs.That disclosure raises the specter that Flynn violated the U.S. Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which bans retired general officers from accepting payments from foreign governments, according to House Oversight Committee Ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-MD), in a letter to the White House, Pentagon, and FBI.Flynn spokesman Price Floyd said the retired general had informed the Defense Intelligence Agency of the paid speaking engagement for RT. “General Flynn informed and briefed the DIA before his trip to Russia and again upon his return,” Floyd told The Daily Beast on Thursday.“Flynn properly reported his overseas travel for the December 2015 trip, in accordance with the regulations for people holding security clearances,” said DIA spokesman Jim Kudla on Thursday.He reportedly did not file paperwork to report the payments to the U.S. Army, however. Army spokesmen did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

But Flynn’s multiple links to foreign concerns raise questions about how carefully the Trump administration vetted its senior staffers, as well as Flynn’s own instinct for what may be legal but not quite appropriate behavior for a retired flag officer.They also highlight loopholes in Justice Department measures meant to require lobbyists to disclose their work on behalf of foreign governments. Proponents of reforms to those laws say Flynn followed the letter, if not the spirit, of existing rules on foreign governing lobbying, though Flynn’s spokesperson denied that that was the case.But discrepancies in the firm’s various lobbying filings point to exactly the kind of gray area the Justice Department warned about in a report last fall. Justice officials tasked with enforcing the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) told the department’s inspector general that foreign governments might be exploiting loopholes in U.S. lobbying disclosure laws to exert influence surreptitiously on American public policy.“We are hoping that with this whole controversy surrounding Flynn, there will be a renewed interest in closing these loopholes,” said Lydia Dennett, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight. The Flynn situation “is the perfect example of how things can fall through the cracks.”***Last fall, Flynn disclosed to the Justice Department that he was lobbying for the Dutch company Inovo BV. Flynn’s initial lobbyist registration form last year said the Flynn Intel Group would “advise [Inovo] on U.S. domestic and foreign policy.”He registered through a domestic disclosure process that requires far less information to be made public than when one registers as a foreign agent. And in the months that followed, as Flynn’s registration as a foreign agent essentially acknowledges, its push for Gülen’s extradition crossed the line from purely commercial work to lobbying for a major foreign-policy objective of the Turkish government.His initial lobbying registration was a tacit claim that Inovo was independent of the Turkish government. But Inovo’s owner, Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin, chairs a Turkish trade promotion group organized under the auspices of the country’s Foreign Economic Relations Board, whose members are government-appointed. And Alptekin told Turkish media that he had helped arrange a visit to the United States by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last year.Kian’s congressional presentation on the threat posed by Gülen and his American followers, and Flynn’s subsequent column, dovetailed with the interests of the Turkish government, which has blamed a failed July coup attempt on cleric Gülen and demanded his extradition.That’s why Flynn’s lawyers decided to retroactively register him as a foreign agent “out of an abundance of caution,” a person close to Flynn told The Daily Beast, speaking anonymously as a condition of describing Flynn’s legal strategy.His Inovo work, Flynn acknowledged in the filing, “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.”White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the White House had been unaware Flynn was about to make a FARA filing, but the person close to Flynn said his lawyers had notified the White House counsel’s office before and after the inauguration of President Donald Trump.Kian did not respond to emails or telephoned requests for comment, nor did Flynn’s law firm, Covington & Burling.***Yet for all that smoke, legal experts say Flynn was complying with the law as currently written—or enforced.Disclosure requirements turn on the question of who benefits. Lobbyists whose work principally benefits a foreign government or political party must notify the Justice Department and register as a foreign agent.But lobbyists for foreign companies and organizations, even state-owned ones, that are not controlled or directed by a foreign government can simply report their work as if they were working for a U.S. company.That’s why Justice officials have warned that foreign state actors might seek to evade the heightened scrutiny of registering as a foreign agent by routing U.S. advocacy through ostensibly independent commercial entities.Officials at the Justice Department's National Security Division (NSD), which administers and enforces foreign agent laws, warned the inspector general in a report last September that foreign governments might try to influence U.S. policy through private companies whose lobbyists manage to evade FARA’s heightened disclosure requirements. The inspector general agreed, and the Justice Department has since recommended that Congress close the loophole through legislation.The Trump White House has accentuated shortcomings in lobbyist reporting laws, Dennett says, by narrowly tailoring ethics requirements surrounding foreign lobbyists to cover only those who register as foreign agents.Trump administration appointees are required to pledge that they will never, after their time in the administration, engage in lobbying activity that “would require me to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”Dennett says that pledge leaves open the possibility of work on behalf of non-U.S. companies, some of which might have closer ties to foreign governments than they let on.Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist with the group Public Citizen, considers the Trump administration to be a case study in the need for more stringent disclosure.“The Trump administration is stepping into the White House with more foreign investments and conflicts of interest with foreign countries than we’ve ever seen before. So this is something that can become a very, very critical issue in the next four years,” he said in a January interview.There is one upside to the potential controversy. “All our lobby disclosure improvements, and even the lobby disclosure acts themselves, have come in the wake of scandal,” Holman said.“I’m fully expecting the new Trump administration to be one of the most scandal-ridden administrations in recent history,” he said, “and upon that scandal, we may be able to promote some sort of vast improvements” in foreign lobbyist disclosure laws.

WHAT MIKE FLYNN DID FOR TURKEYBy Nicholas Schmidle March 16, 2017New information about Flynn’s involvement with Turkey raises new questions about his judgment—and about the Administration’s handling of his entanglements.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW HARRER-POOL / GETTYOne Friday last July, as members of the Turkish military were staging a coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Michael Flynn, the retired lieutenant general who went on to become Donald Trump’s first national-security adviser, gave a speech in Cleveland. The event was organized by a local chapter of act for America, a self-described “grassroots national security organization” that regards Muslims with considerable suspicion. “There’s an ongoing coup going on in Turkey right now,” Flynn said in his remarks. “Right now!” The country, Flynn said, was heading “towards Islamism” under Erdoğan, and the military was trying to preserve Turkey’s secular identity. The audience applauded the putschists.

A day later, the coup failed; Erdoğan proceeded to round up thousands of alleged plotters and sympathizers, including military officers, judges, and teachers. A Times editorial accused the Turkish President of staging a “counter-coup” and acting “increasingly authoritarian.” Such characterizations tend to unnerve tourists and foreign investors. In early August, Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish businessman and the chairman of the Turkey-U.S. Business Council, contacted Flynn’s consulting firm, the Flynn Intel Group, about repairing Turkey’s image in the United States. Flynn, whom I profiled for the magazine in February, was one of Trump’s most prominent supporters on the campaign trail, and often accused Hillary Clinton of “influence peddling.” Still, he agreed to help Alptekin, in exchange for a six-hundred-thousand-dollar contract.

In order to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or fara, lobbyists working directly or indirectly on behalf of foreign governments must file paperwork with the Justice Department identifying themselves as “foreign agents.” After agreeing to work with Alptekin, Flynn and his colleagues initially considered doing this, according to a source who participated in the discussions, but they concluded that it wasn’t necessary, since Alptekin was not a Turkish official and the funds were not Turkish government funds. Instead, they filed with Congress, under the Lobbying Disclosures Act. Flynn was merely helping a businessman, they rationalized, and not acting as an agent of a foreign government.

But, last week, Flynn—who was forced to resign as Trump’s national-security adviser on February 13th—refiled his paperwork, to acknowledge that his work for Alptekin may, in fact, have benefitted the Turkish government. The disclosure put Flynn’s work with Alptekin in a new light, raising new questions about Flynn’s judgment—during both the campaign and his brief time in the Administration—and about the Administration’s handling of his entanglements.

Flynn’s work for Alptekin began in earnest in mid-September, when the businessman arranged a meeting in New York between Flynn and the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, at a New York hotel. Turkey’s energy minister, Berat Albayrak, who is also Erdoğan’s son-in-law, was there, too. On Flynn’s side, James Woolsey, a former director of the C.I.A. and a member of Flynn Intel Group’s advisory board, attended, as did Brian McCauley, a former F.B.I. agent who worked closely with Flynn in Iraq. (Woolsey told me that he had only “perfunctory involvement” with the Flynn Intel Group and “received no compensation.”) Though the full breadth of the group’s conversation is not known, the same source told me that the Turks sought, among other things, Flynn’s assistance in maligning Fethullah Gülen, a self-exiled cleric who lives in Pennsylvania, whom Erdoğan blamed for the attempted coup. Subsequently, the Flynn Intel Group paid S.G.R., a lobbying and public-relations firm, forty thousand dollars to work on a project that included designing a graphic—“Gulenopoly”—characterizing Gülen as “the Mula Mullah” whose “clandestine” movement had “mastered the game of political and economic influence.”

Yet it seemed that Alptekin was expecting more from Flynn and his colleagues. On November 2nd, Alptekin met with Bijan Kian, the vice-president of the Flynn Intel Group, and McCauley, among others, at the Flynn Intel Group’s offices, in Alexandria, Virginia. (Flynn was not present.) Alptekin stressed their need to produce something—and soon, since Election Day was approaching and the polls suggested that Trump was certain to lose. “We have to generate something to show Turkey how successful we can be,” Alptekin said, according to the source. “What success can we show them now?”

A week later, an op-ed appeared in The Hill, a Washington, D.C., newspaper, authored by Flynn. It heralded Turkey as “our greatest ally” against the Islamic State; accused Obama of “keeping Erdogan’s government at arm’s length”; and described Gülen as a “false façade,” a closet supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood—the Islamist political movement founded in Egypt—and “Turkey’s Osama Bin Laden.”

Nine days after winning the election, Trump appointed Flynn as his national-security adviser. The following day, Bill McGinley, a law partner at Jones Day who advised Trump during the campaign and transition, and who is now the White House Cabinet secretary, spoke on the phone with Kian and others working with Flynn to review the particulars of Flynn’s piece in The Hill. When asked about the article, Kian said that Flynn wrote it himself, and that it was unrelated to his work for Alptekin. “Some people seemed skeptical as to whether Flynn had really woken up the day before the election and felt compelled to write an op-ed defending Erdoğan,” the source said. “McGinley wanted to know if Turkish government dollars touched that op-ed.” (Flynn was not on the call.)

According to the Washington Post, Don McGahn, now the White House Counsel, was also notified during the transition of Flynn’s potential ties with Turkey. (In response to questions about McGinley’s conversation with Flynn Intel Group executives, the White House said, in a statement, “The transition team advised Flynn, like numerous other appointees and nominees, to retain his own counsel to ensure his own compliance with legal obligations. The transition was subsequently informed that Flynn retained counsel.”)

The Flynn Intel Group’s contract with Alptekin was terminated in November, though Turkey’s interests may have remained on Flynn’s mind. A few days before Trump assumed office, Flynn spoke with Susan Rice, Obama’s national-security adviser, to discuss her team’s ongoing initiatives against isis. An element of their plan for taking Raqqa, isis’s self-proclaimed capital, entailed aligning militarily with the Y.P.G., an armed Kurdish group that the Turkish government regards as terrorists. According to the Washington Post, Flynn told Rice not to commit to that plan. “Don’t approve it,” Flynn said. “We’ll make the decision.” Once Trump took office, the plan was put on hold.

Meanwhile, by late January, Flynn’s attorneys were again exploring the prospect of refiling under fara. They were preparing the paperwork when news emerged about contact, before the Inauguration, between Flynn and Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S., and how Flynn had supposedly misled Vice-President Mike Pence about that contact. In the wake of the scandal, Flynn was fired—but the fara discussions continued.

Three weeks ago, Flynn’s attorney Robert Kelner, a partner at Covington & Burling, a firm that specializes in political-law compliance, met with Justice Department lawyers. The Justice officials later urged that, in order to comply with the law, Flynn should register as a foreign agent: Flynn’s work for Alptekin may not have been at the behest of the Turkish government, but it served Ankara’s interest.

Last week, after Flynn’s foreign-agent status became public, Pence described the news as “an affirmation of the President’s decision to ask General Flynn to resign,” and said that the reports of Flynn’s work for Turkey had been “the first I’d heard of it.” But on November 18th—the same day McGinley spoke with Flynn Intel Group’s executives—Elijah Cummings, a congressman from Maryland, addressed a letter to Pence, expressing concern about Flynn’s “being paid to lobby the U.S. government on behalf of a foreign government’s interests.” As more details about Flynn’s work become public—on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that he was paid tens thousands of dollars by Russian companies as recently as 2015—it may get harder for the Administration to maintain that he was operating in a vacuum.

Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign as national security adviser amid controversy over his contacts with Russia’s ambassador, collected nearly $68,000 in fees and expenses from Russia-related entities in 2015, a higher amount than was previously known, according to newly released documents.

The records show that the bulk of the money, more than $45,000, came from the Russian government-backed television network RT, in connection to a December 2015 trip Flynn took to Moscow. Flynn has acknowledged that RT sponsored his trip, during which he attended a gala celebrating the network’s 10th anniversary and was seated near Russian President Vladi­mir Putin. His speakers bureau took a cut of the fee.

The notion that a presidential candidate’s closest foreign policy adviser and then national security adviser was so richly rewarded by a hostile foreign power would have been unthinkable before this president.

On one level, it confirms how thoroughly unprofessional and incompetent President Trump’s operation has been. “The issue here is the haphazard nature of the campaign and the campaign organization,” former CIA director Michael V. Hayden tells me. “There does not appear to have been any kind of vetting process or rules-setting or filtering or even just asking people straight-up questions. And then people just seemed to slip in and out of the campaign organization, folks like Rogers Stone or Carter Page.” He added, “The approach could work for a family business, I suppose, but it’s not a good formula for a campaign, and it’s even worse for an administration.”

Former ambassador Eric Edelman is likewise incredulous. Via email he asks rhetorically, “How could this not have been revealed in whatever vetting the Trump Transition did on Flynn for NSA.?”

Well, that is one of many questions that need to be answered. Unfortunately, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, seems more interested in investigating the leaks about Flynn than in getting to the bottom of Flynn’s Russia connection. (The Weekly Standard reported: “The House Intelligence Committee will subpoena information from law enforcement and intelligence agencies if necessary to investigate potential surveillance violations tied to former Trump national security adviser General Mike Flynn, the committee’s chairman said Wednesday.”) Perhaps the committee or Sen. John McCain’s Armed Services Committee would be interested in looking into this further.

To start out, we have a bunch of questions:

Was Flynn advising Trump when he was paid by the Russians?If not, did the Russians know Flynn would be joining the Trump campaign?Did he, at the time he came onto the campaign or at any point thereafter, disclose his financial relationship?Where’s the speech he gave in Russia at the event for RT?Why did he deny that RT is a propaganda outlet controlled by the Kremlin?What did he discuss with Russian officials (before or after the inauguration) concerning Ukraine, Syria, U.S. policy toward Russia, Trump’s views toward Russia, NATO or any other matter of interest to the Russian government?How did the change in the Republican National Committee platform to remove language pledging military support for Ukraine come about?How was it that Flynn came to join Trump? Who hired him?Does Flynn know how so many pro-Putin advisers just happened to wind up in the employ of the presidential candidate/eventual president?Who else in the campaign had financial ties to Russia?Did Trump ever discuss business ties to Russia?Does Flynn know of any business transactions between Trump or his company/family and Russian officials or oligarchs?That should be enough to get started. At this point, however, there is absolutely no excuse not to call Flynn and get answers under oath.https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ri ... ea23575ae3

Mike Flynn failed to report 2014 encounter with Russian national when he was intelligence agency head: WSJ

Former Trump National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, who stepped down in February, has been under fire for his unreported relations and communications with Russian companies and officials. But the controversy dates back prior to his short time working under the Trump administration.

In 2014, while working as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Flynn attended a U.K. security conference where he met Svetlana Lokhova, a Russian and British graduate student, the Wall Street Journal reported. Flynn never reported the meeting to the Department of Defense (DoD), which is standard procedure in the U.S. intelligence community.

As the director of the DIA at the time, Flynn would have been expected to report any contacts with foreign nationals he did not know.

In recent weeks, Flynn has been at the center of various controversies involving relations with Russia. It was revealed that he received $45,386 from Russia Today (RT) to fly to Moscow to speak at the network’s 10th anniversary celebration.

He also received over $11,000 from Russian air cargo carrier, Volga-Dnepr in August of 2015. The company had been blacklisted by the Pentagon at the time.

According to the Wall Street Journal‘s report, in his position at the DIA, Flynn would have been instructed to treat contacts from foreign nationals he did not already know as a potential effort to gain sensitive information or for recruitment.

“A senior official like him definitely ought to be expected to detect that and report it,” a former official told the outlet.

Flynn’s spokesman, Price Floyd, commenting on the matter, said, “This is a false story. The inference that the contact between Gen. Flynn and a Russian national described in this story should be seen in any light other than incidental contact is simply untrue.”

Dan O’Brien, the chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time, added that nothing “struck him as improper,” regarding Flynn’s interaction with Lokhova. Lokhova declined the Wall Street Journal’s request for comment.

One security expert who spoke with the outlet did add that Flynn should have been cautious with his meeting and notified the DoD. “He certainly knows better,” the person said.

Ex-CIA Director: Mike Flynn and Turkish Officials Discussed Removal of Erdogan Foe From U.S.James Woolsey says he attended a September meeting where other participants, including then-Trump adviser Mike Flynn, talked of moving Fethullah Gulen back to Turkey without going through U.S. extradition processFormer National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, center, consulted last September with Turkish government ministers about the case of a controversial Muslim cleric.

By JAMES V. GRIMALDI, DION NISSENBAUM and MARGARET COKERUpdated March 24, 2017 2:35 p.m. ET83 COMMENTSRetired Army Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, while serving as an adviser to the Trump campaign, met with top Turkish government ministers and discussed removing a Muslim cleric from the U.S. and taking him to Turkey, according to former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey, who attended, and others who were briefed on the meeting.

The discussion late last summer involved ideas about how to get Fethullah Gulen, a cleric whom Turkey has accused of orchestrating last summer’s failed military coup, to Turkey without going through the U.S. extradition legal process, according to Mr. Woolsey and those who were briefed.

Mr. Woolsey told The Wall Street Journal he arrived at the meeting in New York on Sept. 19 in the middle of the discussion and found the topic startling and the actions being discussed possibly illegal.

The Turkish ministers were interested in open-ended thinking on the subject, and the ideas were raised hypothetically, said the people who were briefed. The ministers in attendance included the son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the country’s foreign minister, foreign-lobbying disclosure documents show.

Mr. Woolsey said the idea was “a covert step in the dead of night to whisk this guy away.” The discussion, he said, didn’t include actual tactics for removing Mr. Gulen from his U.S. home. If specific plans had been discussed, Mr. Woolsey said, he would have spoken up and questioned their legality.

It isn’t known who raised the idea or what Mr. Flynn concluded about it.

Price Floyd, a spokesman for Mr. Flynn, who was advising the Trump campaign on national security at the time of the meeting, disputed the account, saying “at no time did Gen. Flynn discuss any illegal actions, nonjudicial physical removal or any other such activities.”

Mr. Flynn served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser for 24 days and resigned after he misled Vice President Mike Pence and others about his contact with a Russian diplomat. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into whether Trump campaign officials collaborated with the Russian government to influence the presidential election.

Former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey said attendees at the September meeting discussed removing a Muslim cleric from the U.S. and taking him to Turkey. Former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey said attendees at the September meeting discussed removing a Muslim cleric from the U.S. and taking him to Turkey. PHOTO: DAVID HUME KENNERLY/GETTY IMAGESOn March 2, weeks after Mr. Flynn’s departure from the Trump administration, the Flynn Intel Group, his consulting firm, filed with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for the government of Turkey. Mr. Trump was unaware Mr. Flynn had been consulting on behalf of the Turkish government when he named him national security adviser, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said this month.

In its filing, Mr. Flynn’s firm said its work from August to November “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” The filing said his firm’s fee, $530,000, wasn't paid by the government but by Inovo BV, a Dutch firm owned by a Turkish businessman, Ekim Alptekin.U.S.-Turkish relations deteriorated in the final year of the Obama administration over disagreements about extraditing Mr. Gulen and U.S. support for Syrian Kurdish forces battling Islamic State. The Turkish government has been demanding Mr. Gulen’s extradition to face charges that he was the architect of an unsuccessful military coup last summer to overthrow Mr. Erdogan.

Mr. Gulen, who since 1999 has lived in the Pocono Mountains north of Philadelphia and has a green card giving him permission to live in the U.S., denies involvement. Mr. Erdogan has been trying for years to undermine Mr. Gulen, a one-time ally whom Turkey has now branded as a terrorist leader.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Tuesday he had given the White House and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions new evidence linking Mr. Gulen to the coup.

Mr. Woolsey said he attended the Sept. 19 meeting at the urging of the Flynn Intel Group’s chairman and president, Bijan Kian. Mr. Woolsey said he had agreed to be on the group’s advisory board and was offered a consulting fee for his work, but turned it down because of what he heard at the meeting. He held no stake in the firm.

“It seemed to be naive,” Mr. Woolsey said about the discussion. “I didn’t put a lot of credibility in it. This is a country of legal process and a Constitution, and you don’t send out folks to haul somebody overseas.”

The meeting, held at the Essex House hotel in Manhattan, included Mr. Cavusoglu and Berat Albayrak, Mr. Erdogan’s son-in-law and the country’s energy minister, according to the disclosure documents. Also present were Messrs. Alptekin and Mr. Kian.

Cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey has accused of orchestrating last summer’s failed coup, at his home in Pennsylvania last year.Cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey has accused of orchestrating last summer’s failed coup, at his home in Pennsylvania last year. PHOTO: CHARLES MOSTOLLER/REUTERSMr. Woolsey said he didn’t say anything during the discussion, but later cautioned some attendees that trying to remove Mr. Gulen was a bad idea that might violate U.S. law. Mr. Woolsey said he also informed the U.S. government by notifying Vice President Joe Biden through a mutual friend.

The mutual friend confirmed to the Journal he told Mr. Biden about the meeting. Mr. Biden’s spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter, other than to say Mr. Biden felt the Gulen matter should be handled through the courts.

Mr. Flynn’s spokesman, Mr. Floyd, said that at the meeting “Gen. Flynn did discuss the Flynn Intel Group’s work for Inovo that included gathering information that could lead to a legal case against Mr. Gulen.”

Messrs. Kian and Alptekin didn’t respond to calls and emails seeking comment, nor did a spokesman for Mr. Albayrak. Mr. Cavusoglu’s spokesman referred the Journal to the Turkish Embassy in Washington.

In a written statement, the Turkish Embassy acknowledged that Turkish officials met with Mr. Flynn but declined to discuss the conversation. Referencing the Flynn Intel Group’s client, Inovo, the embassy said: “We are not in a position to comment on any engagement between a U.S. consultancy firm and a private company owned by a Turkish businessman.”

The disclosure Mr. Flynn’s firm filed with the U.S. government this month said the meeting was “for the purpose of understanding better the political climate in Turkey at the time.”

Inovo hired Mr. Flynn on behalf of an Israeli company seeking to export natural gas to Turkey, the filing said, and Mr. Alptekin wanted information on the U.S.-Turkey political climate to advise the gas company about its Turkish investments.

Mr. Woolsey, who served as CIA director under President Bill Clinton, offered in September to advise the Trump campaign and opposed Hillary Clinton for president. He briefly served as a senior adviser to the transition team.https://www.wsj.com/articles/ex-cia-dir ... 1490380426

Pentagon weighs response to Flynn working on behalf of Turkish interests without U.S. permission

By Dan Lamothe March 23

President Trump’s ousted national security adviser did not seek permission from the U.S. government to work as a paid foreign agent for Turkish interests, U.S. defense officials said, raising the possibility that the Pentagon could dock the retirement pay of Michael T. Flynn.

Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the Defense Department is reviewing the issue. It arose after Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, registered retroactively this month with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for work that his company, Flynn Intel Group, carried out on behalf of Inovo BV, a Netherlands-based company. It is owned by Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish businessman who is not a part of the Turkish government, but has links to it.

The Inovo assignment centered on researching Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric whom Ankara blames for fomenting a coup attempt last summer and wants extradited from the United States, where he has lived in exile for years. That led Flynn’s company to conclude that the work “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey,” according to a letter sent by Flynn’s attorney, Robert K. Kelner, to the Justice Department, along with the filing.

Flynn Intel Group received a total of $530,000 in three payments between September and November from Inovo BV before discontinuing the arrangement after Trump was elected president, according to Flynn’s filings. It is unclear from the paperwork how much Flynn personally profited from the deal, but he is the majority owner and chief executive officer of the firm. Kelner, reached by phone Wednesday night, declined to comment on the deal.

Flynn filed the foreign agent paperwork March 7, about three weeks after being removed as national security adviser after revelations that he misled Vice President Pence about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Flynn’s company previously disclosed its role in lobbying for Inovo BV, but did not file any paperwork as a foreign agent for Turkey because it had concluded that its client was a foreign corporation, rather than a foreign government. It changed course and filed as a foreign agent to “eliminate any doubt” about the issue, Kelner wrote. Individuals who represent foreign governments must register with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Flynn’s work for Inovo came as he prepared an opinion piece for The Hill newspaper that appeared on Election Day and criticized the Obama administration while arguing that “from Turkey’s point of view, Washington is harboring Turkey’s Osama bin Laden.” Flynn’s new filing acknowledges that the piece used information gathered through work for Inovo, but denies that either Inovo or the Turkish government requested it or had a hand in writing it. However, Inovo did receive an advance copy of it for review, the filing said.

An Army spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Jennifer Johnson, said that the service has no record of Flynn ever requesting permission before accepting any kind of “foreign employment” — something that Defense Department guidelines, separate from the Foreign Agents Registration Act — explicitly require when former officers work for a foreign government.

The Pentagon’s guidelines were established to comply with the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which states that no individual holding any office “of profit or trust” can accept any pay or gift from a foreign government or official without the permission of the U.S. government. It applies to retired officers and enlisted service members because they are subject to recall to active duty, according to a Defense Department assessment of the issue.

Defense Department guidelines warn that the department’s top financial officer, the comptroller, “may pursue debt collection” if they do not do so. Any debt collection due to an emoluments clause violation would be capped at no more than what an individual makes in retirement pay during a period of unauthorized employment. In Flynn’s case, that is more than $35,000 for the three months of the Inovo project.

The position of Defense Department comptroller is held on an acting basis by Andrew Roth, a former Obama administration official who was held over to help with budget issues. David Norquist, who served as chief financial officer in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, was nominated last week as his replacement.

The Defense guidelines do not specify whether representing the interests of a foreign government while paid by a private corporation is a violation of the rules. Violations of the Emoluments Clause also are rarely enforced.

“This is not something that has generally been enforced, but I do think we are at a phase where people are thinking about the remedies for this issue a lot more carefully,” said William Baude, a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago.

The issue comes as some lawmakers continue to press for information about whether Flynn violated any laws by accepting money to appear with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a gala dinner for RT, a Kremlin-controlled media organization. Flynn received $45,000 for the December 2015 appearance, according to documents released recently by the House Oversight Committee.

Jennifer Werner, a spokeswoman for Democrats on the committee, said the Army told committee members that it has found no documents suggesting that Flynn asked the service for permission to speak at the RT gala. But Kelner suggested that isn’t so clear-cut: Flynn briefed members of the Defense Intelligence Agency about his trip to Moscow before and afterward, Kelner said Wednesday. Asked if he sought approval through Army Human Resources Command, as the guidelines stipulate, Kelner declined to comment.

On Wednesday, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), its ranking member, requested that the White House, the Defense Department, the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence furnish documents related to Flynn’s foreign contacts.

Chaffetz and Cummings said in a letter that the committee is reviewing whether Flynn “fully disclosed his payments from Russian, Turkish, or other foreign sources,” specifically mentioning the RT payment without limiting the request to it.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/che ... 527a4ae599

Mike Flynn Offers to Testify in Exchange for ImmunityFormer national security adviser tells FBI, the House and Senate intelligence committees he’s willing to be interviewed in exchange for deal, officials say

By SHANE HARRIS, CAROL E. LEE and JULIAN E. BARNESMarch 30, 2017 6:29 p.m. ET14 COMMENTSWASHINGTON—Mike Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, has told the Federal Bureau of Investigation and congressional officials investigating the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia that he is willing to be interviewed in exchange for a grant of immunity from prosecution, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.

As an adviser to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, and later one of Mr. Trump’s top aides in the White House, Mr. Flynn was privy to some of the most sensitive foreign-policy deliberations of the new administration and was directly involved in discussions about the possible lifting of sanctions on Russia imposed by the Obama administration.

He has made the offer to the FBI and the House and Senate intelligence committees though his lawyer but has so far found no takers, the officials said.

Interesting turn of events. Seems like the flipside/drawback of Trump's power sustainment strategy - filling his admin with not-otherwise-necessarily-attuned-to-one-another ideologues so as to hold mutiny at bay. Downside - no loyalty to any big "agenda" hence each's likely willingness to throw Trump under (gold-plated) bus in moments of personal danger.

"If you support factions that get big money backing, you are probably not a 'revolutionary'."

Michael Flynn: new evidence spy chiefs had concerns about Russian tiesUS and UK officials were troubled by Moscow contacts and encounter with woman linked to Luke Harding, Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Nick HopkinsFriday 31 March 2017 10.01 EDT Last modified on Friday 31 March 2017 10.21 EDTUS intelligence officials had serious concerns about Michael Flynn’s appointment as the White House national security adviser because of his history of contacts with Moscow and his encounter with a woman who had trusted access to Russian spy agency records, the Guardian has learned.

US and British intelligence officers discussed Flynn’s “worrisome” behaviour well before his appointment last year by Donald Trump, multiple sources have said.

They raised concerns about Flynn’s ties to Russia and his perceived obsession with Iran. They were also anxious about his capacity for “linear thought” and some actions that were regarded as highly unusual for a three-star general.

Flynn was forced to quit in February, after 24 days in the job. He resigned when it emerged he had lied to the vice-president, Mike Pence. Flynn said he had not discussed lifting US sanctions on Russia with Sergei Kislyak, Moscow’s US ambassador, but later admitted this was untrue.

On Thursday, Flynn indicated he was willing to testify before the FBI and congressional committees about potential links between the Trump campaign and Russia in exchange for immunity. In a statement released by his lawyer, Flynn said he had a story to tell but was seeking “assurances against unfair prosecution”.

The house oversight committee is examining the general’s activities before he joined Trump’s White House. It is likely to focus on Flynn’s contacts with foreign nationals and will also look at fees he may have received from foreign governments, including Russia and Turkey, and linked entities.

The committee will further consider what security vetting Flynn received before he took up the job. It is seeking information from five senior officials including the FBI director, James Comey. Earlier this month, Comey confirmed his agency was investigating possible collusion between Trump and Russia to influence the outcome of the US election.

Flynn’s erratic conduct had troubled US intelligence officials for some time, multiple sources have told the Guardian.

One concern involved an encounter with a Russian-British graduate student, Svetlana Lokhova, whom Flynn met on a trip to Cambridge in February 2014.

At the time, Flynn was one of the top US spies and the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which provides information to the Pentagon about the military strengths and intentions of other states and terrorist groups.

A historian and a leading expert on Soviet espionage, Lokhova has claimed to have unique access to previously classified Soviet-era material in Moscow. She says her forthcoming book makes groundbreaking revelations about Soviet military intelligence operations run by the GRU – Russia’s military spy agency.

Western historians say access to intelligence agency records in Moscow has been severely restricted under Vladimir Putin. One Russian historian who has written extensively on Russian intelligence said the situation with the GRU was “a complete disaster”.

“At least with the FSB and SVR [domestic and foreign spy agencies] there are places you can apply to view the archives, but with the GRU there’s not even a place to apply,” the historian said.

“Maybe two or three military historians have been allowed in. Sometimes there are duplicates in other archives, but getting into the actual GRU archive is basically impossible.”

Flynn and Lokhova were introduced to each other at the end of a dinner attended by 20 guests who included Sir Richard Dearlove – the former head of MI6 – and Prof Christopher Andrew, the official MI5 historian.

Flynn says the meeting with Lokhova was “incidental” and lasted just 20 minutes. However, Andrew has said Flynn invited Lokhova to accompany him on his next official visit to Moscow to help with simultaneous translation. The trip fell through soon afterwards because of Putin’s annexation of Crimea, Andrew wrote in the Sunday Times.

The Guardian understands Flynn and Lokhova remained in email contact, conducted through an unclassified channel. In one email exchange described by Andrew, Flynn signed himself as “General Misha”, Russian for Mike.

Lokhova also listed Flynn as one of four referees who would provide selective endorsements for her book, which is expected to detail how Russian spies penetrated the US atomic weapons programme.

Though there is no suggestion of impropriety, Flynn would have been expected to “self report” any conversation with an unknown person, especially with links to an “adversary” country, such as Russia.

Flynn did not disclose his conversation with Lokhova, the Wall Street Journal reported. Whatever concerns the US intelligence agencies had over Flynn, he retained his top-level security clearance.

Price Floyd, a spokesman for Flynn, said: “This is a false story. The inference that the contact between Gen Flynn and a Russian [dual] national described in this story should be seen in any light other than incidental contact is simply untrue.”

Floyd refused to comment on questions about the alleged email correspondence, or the potential citation for Lokhova’s book.

Lokhova’s partner, David North, also declined to comment in detail. He said Lokhova and Flynn “had a 20-minute public conversation” and have not “met or spoken since”. North disputed Andrew’s account of the dinner in Cambridge and did not answer questions about the emails.

Multiple sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the CIA and FBI were discussing this episode, along with many others, as they assessed Flynn’s suitability to serve as national security adviser.

The Cambridge meeting was part of a wider pattern of “maverick” behaviour which included repeated contacts with Russia, the sources said.

After he resigned from the DIA in 2014, Flynn became a contributor to RT, formerly known as Russia Today, the Kremlin’s English-language news channel.

In summer 2015, Flynn met Trump for the first time after being invited to do so by his team. That year he received about $45,000 (£36,000) for attending RT’s gala dinner in Moscow, where he sat next to Putin. Flynn also accepted $11,250 from two Russian firms for speaking engagements in Washington. One of them was Kaspersky Lab, a cybersecurity company with ties to the Kremlin.

The US army is investigating the RT transaction and whether it was properly disclosed, according to a source close to US intelligence. The US constitution’s emoluments clause forbids military officers from accepting foreign government payments without the permission of Congress.

The sources pointed to a reported remark by Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general, who had told the White House in January that Flynn was vulnerable to blackmail by Russian intelligence.

Flynn’s spokesman said Flynn had signed on with a speakers’ bureau after his 2014 resignation, as other former senior government officials have done. He said Flynn had alerted the DIA about the RT speech before he travelled and had briefed the DIA upon his return. The spokesman said Flynn had “nothing to hide”.

As DIA chief, Flynn visited the GRU in Moscow in 2013. He was the first US officer ever allowed inside its headquarters, where he gave a lecture on leadership. “It was a great trip,” he told the Washington Post, adding that it was fully approved. Flynn was keen to make a second GRU visit but permission was denied, it is understood.

Sipa USA via APBySTEPHEN BRAUN, CHAD DAYPublishedAPRIL 1, 2017, 3:31 PM EDTWASHINGTON (AP) — A financial disclosure filed by former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn shows he earned nearly $1.3 million for speeches to Russian companies and lobbying for a Turkish firm, as well as work for other entities.

Flynn filed the financial document Friday, the day the White House released scores of disclosures from Trump administration officials. Flynn had electronically signed an earlier disclosure in February according to one document. A second filing signed by Flynn was dated Friday but was released Saturday instead of with other administration disclosures.

The new disclosure shows that Flynn declared more than $827,000 from his work for the Flynn Intel Group. The firm filed as a foreign agent last month to the Justice Department, saying its work likely benefited the government of Turkey.http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/flynn ... ump-turkey

Michael Flynn Underreported $150,000 in Income on White House FormsZeke J Miller5:33 PM ETFormer National Security Advisor Michael Flynn underreported more than $150,000 in 2016 income on his initial personal financial disclosure form filed with the White House, including a financial relationship with Russian state-backed outlet RT.Flynn, who was fired by President Trump on Feb. 13 for misleading Vice President Mike Pence on the nature of his contacts with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak, filed his initial required disclosure form just two days before his exit from the White House.A revised form was filed with the White House Counsel's Office on March 31, the same day the Administration made public disclosure forms for its senior employees.The initial form did not include more than $150,000 earned from 12 speaking engagements in 2016, including $10,000 for an October 2016 engagement for Ibrahim Kurtulus, who is linked to Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Flynn last month was forced to register as a foreign agent for work conducted on behalf of the Turkish government in the run-up to the November presidential election. The White House was not aware of Flynn's relationship with Inovo, the firm that hired him to promote Turkey in the U.S.Flynn's initial filing also failed to disclose some of the sources of his earnings greater than $5,000 during the 2015 and 2016 calendar years, as required. That included a speaking engagement for RT, the Russian-backed network which paid him more than $30,000 in 2015. Flynn attended RT's 10th anniversary gala that year, at which he was seated with Russian President Vladimir Putin.In both instances, the updated form released Friday accurately reflected Flynn's true earnings. When he submitted the initial form, Flynn certified that his representations on the form were "true, complete and correct to the best of my knowledge."A source close to Flynn cast the discrepancy as a result of Flynn not going through the normal consultation process with White House staff before the form was completed.“At the time at the General resigned he had just begun the process of submitting the form and consulting with White House counsel and Office of Government Ethics," the source said. "That process was suspended when he left. Very recently the White House counsel reached out to complete the process and he did that."Flynn's second filing was signed by hand, as he lost access to the government's ethics-compliance system once he left the White House.http://time.com/4722069/michael-flynn-r ... ey-income/

The coverup often ends up being more illegal than the original crime being covered up, and Michael Flynn is quickly finding that out the hard way. Flynn’s efforts at hiding his communications and financial arrangements with Russia have already put him on the hook for two felonies: lying to the FBI and failing to register as a foreign agent. And now Donald Trump’s White House is being forced to acknowledge that Flynn also lied on his White House financial disclosure forms by omitting the money he was taking from Russia and Turkey.

It’s now been revealed that Mike Flynn left at least $150,000 in income off the financial disclosure forms he filled out when he took the National Security Adviser in Donald Trump’s White House. Even more strangely, he submitted the falsified disclosure forms two days after he was publicly exposed as having discussed sanctions during the transition period with the Russian Ambassador (source: Time Magazine). That points to motive; he lied on the form to cover up his Russian ties at a time when the scandal was exploding in the media.

We’re still attempting to assess the legal implications of Flynn falsifying the form. But if it is a felony, that’s the third one he’s now on the hook for. No wonder he’s asking for immunity. But he won’t be given it unless he’s willing and able to deliver the goods that would take down a bigger fish – such as Donald Trump.http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/li ... ouse/2146/